Developing an Optimization Model and Program for Planning the Earthwork Based Upon Transportation Theory

During road construction, minimizing haul and return distances as well as keeping a balance between cut and fill quantities are two of the key tasks for earthmoving operation planning. The result of the earthwork planning has a significant impact on the construction cost and duration. Although there have been research efforts regarding optimized earthwork planning using linear programming, the current practice of selecting earthwork planning methods typically depends on a field manager`s intuitive and/or experimental knowledge. Furthermore, there is no system considering earthwork influential field factors including the transportation distance, the earthwork quantity, and the recycling ratio of earth volume. Therefore, this research focuses on the development of such a model for planning the optimized earthwork to increase the efficiency of a road construction. The proposed model is developed based upon the transportation problem method which is a part of Linear Programming. The application result of optimization model on a case study shows that the duration and cost for earthwork ha sbeen reduced approximately 19% and 11% respectively